Have nuclear plants rendered areas uninhabitable for centuries? I'm pretty sure Pripyat can be made habitable if someone wanted to live there, with enough financial investments. It's just that there's so much already habitable land in Belarus/Ukraine that nobody really bothered. Japan is actually trying to cleanup Hamadoori coast, which I believe they will in a few decades, and I think we'll get a lot of valuable decontamination tech and experience out of this.